


To Hurt a Metal Arm

by iwanttoreadmore



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anxiety Disorder, Bucky Is a Good Guy, Cutting, Darcy is defensive, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Panic Attacks, Self-Harm, Steve tries to be a good guy, Suicide Attempt, These are the trigger warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-12
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2019-03-17 00:00:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13647165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iwanttoreadmore/pseuds/iwanttoreadmore
Summary: It hadn’t been a bad day. Subjectively, Darcy knew that her day had been pretty good. It’s just the one thing that had happened, that piled up on things that had already gone wrong. And now here she was, reminding herself how to breathe, with a bleeding arm.





	To Hurt a Metal Arm

“Darce, what happened to your arm??”

Darcy looked up at Steve, and shrugged dismissively. “It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Darcy.” Steve’s tone was heavy with warning, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. Her arm wasn’t even that bad, and it wouldn’t even be very noticeable until tomorrow. 

“Steve. It’s fine. Leave it.” She didn’t leave an room for arguments, and settled the matter by simply turning, and walking away. 

It wasn’t that she didn’t appreciate his concern. She knows that he’s just worried about her. But dammit, if nobody is even so much as to look at Barnes, with his arm, how dare he ask about hers? She didn’t want this any more than Barnes wanted Tony to blow his arm off. (Although, admittedly, his new arm was looking good. Tony doesn’t handle guilt well, so you can be damn sure Barnes has the best arm possible. Though, apparently it wasn’t just Tony’s work on the arm.) 

It wasn’t until a few days later that it was even brought up again. Darcy knew Jane probably wanted to say something, but she hadn’t asked about it since the day that it happened. She had let it go after asking twice with no response, and had resorted to passive aggressively watching every move Darcy made. 

But then, so was everyone else. Just silently... watching her. Looking at her arm, and wondering. It was getting to the point where Darcy just wanted them to ask her about it, and get it over with.

Jane looked over at Darcy for a minute, and that was enough. She just couldn’t deal with it anymore. She quickly stood up, and consequently spilled the cup of coffee she had just gotten herself all over the front of her sweater. 

“Dammit! This was my good sweater!”

“Then I don’t know why you even wore it to the lab. You know how it gets in here.” 

“Only because you’re such a mess.” Darcy let out a huff, and pulled the material away from her body. It was to damn hot for the sweater anyway, but she didn’t have much else to wear. “Janeyyyyy, why????”

“Oh my god, Darcy. Just take it off. Nobody come in anyway. They won’t see it.”

Darcy worried her lips between her teeth, and shrugged. Nobody but the interns came over to Janey’s lab, and they wouldn’t bother her about her arm. God, what a joke. What a fucking mistake. She was so stupid, and she couldn’t believe what she had done. But it had been done. So, she had to deal with it. And with that thought, she peeled the hot, wet fabric away from her, and got to work. 

It got busy fast, With all the paperwork Jane was generating. Before either one of them realized it, hours had passed, and Darcy was hungry. “Hey, Jane? I’m going to go grab something to eat. I expect you to be ready when I get back.”

Jane lifted her arm to acknowledge her, and Darcy laughed. It was a tossup of if Jane actually heard her or not. 

It wasn’t until halfway out the building that Darcy realized she hadn’t covered her arms. A realization followed with immediately walking into Bucky fucking Barnes. “Aw, shit.”

Bucky steadied her, by grabbing her arms, and chuckled. Darcy could feel the panic creeping up her throat. She couldn’t deal with another Avengers judgment. Was Bucky an Avenger? Whatever, she didn’t want to deal with it. 

“Sorry, sweetheart, I must not have been watching close enough.” Bucky have her an exaggerated lookover, and then saw her arm, and frowned. 

Darcy yanked her arm away, and ran her hands through her hair. “Goddamnit, what were you even doing?? Don’t you pay attention?!”

“Aw, c’mon doll, I’m sorry. I was just going to meet Stevie.” 

Darcy spun around, and hit the wall before sliding down. “Great. Steve. Of fucking course.” She took a few deep breaths, before looking up at Bucky. “Shouldn’t you be leaving?”

Bucky looked down at Darcy, and slid down beside her, shrugging. “I ain’t got no where else to be, Doll.”

“I thought you were going to meet Truth, Justice, and the American Way?” 

Bucky let out a surprised laugh. “Stevie is going to love that one. He keeps a list of the unique ones, ya know.” 

Darcy rubbed her arm, and Bucky eyed it. “Does he? And he acts so offended.”

“He only acts that way when he’s upset that he didn’t think of it first. I swear to god, half the things people call ‘im come from him.” 

Darcy giggled and leaned into Bucky. He put his arm over her, and they sat in silence for a few minutes, before Bucky spoke again. 

“So, you wanna talk about it?”

“Bucky, no.”

He frowned as he turned toward her. “Doll, I know that I’m the last person who gets to tell you to talk, but it might help. It’s better than hurting yourself.”

“Bucky... that’s not what I’m doing.” 

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were. God knows I’m a hypocrite enough these days. But damn Doll, I know self inflicted injury when I see it.”

Darcy took a deep breath, shuddering a bit. “When I was 15, one of my friend’s Mom called another friend and I, and asked us to go check on our friend. She wasn’t answering her mom’s texts. It wasn’t unusual, but her mom had been asked to work late. She normally wouldn’t have asked.” 

Bucky turned his body to face hers, and Darcy knew he was listening. “Doll, you don’t gotta—“ Darcy slightly raised her voice, and continued on. 

“We figured that she was just ignoring her mom. Like I said, it wouldn’t have been unusual. I ran inside while my other friend waited in the car, so we could leave as soon as we were able, so we could catch a movie. It was supposed to be in and out.” Darcy took a breath, and Bucky started rubbing her back, silent and attentive now. “I walked into her house and called her name. No answer. But I wasn’t worried yet. I went upstairs and heard the sink dripping. Her bedroom door was slightly ajar, so I peeked my head in. She was laying in bed, covered in her blankets. She was pale and unresponsive to me. When I pulled her blankets away, I saw that she was quite literally laying in a puddle of her own blood.”

Bucky’s hand skipped a beat, before continuing in rubbing her back, with slightly more pressure. Darcy went on before he could say anything. If he was even going to...

“The rest is a blur. I can remember exactly what she looked like lying in her bed, but not what I did after. I know that I called an ambulance, and went outside to get our other friend. I remember them coming in, and telling me that I’d have to answer a few questions. And I remember my other friend telling me that we were at my house, so she must have taken me home. I went inside, sat down, and listened to my other friend cry on my parents shoulders, and then leaving. I didn’t cry. I wouldn’t cry. I went to bed, gripping a razor blade in my hand.”

“Jesus fuck, Doll.”

Darcy turned, and gave Bucky eye contact for the first time since starting her story. “She had cut herself with the intention of not waking up. I cut with the intention of getting the image of her dying out of my head.”

“Aw, Darce...”

“Bucky. It’s okay. She was okay. It took weeks for her arms to heal. Our friendship was badly damaged. But she lived, and she’s happily married, with a baby now. And I’m so proud of her.”

“Aw, Darce—-“

“You already said that.”

Bucky gently grabbed both of her arms, and turned her left arm to see the scabs. “And I’ll say it again. Darce, I’m not worried about how your friend is doing, I’m worried about you.”

Darcy shook her head, and tried to pull her hands away from his, but he held firm to her wrists. “I’m fine. I don’t think anything I said tonight even comes close to what you’ve seen, or had to go through, or—-“

“Done? Maybe not. But you have to stop minimizing your pain. It’s not any less important than what I have. Pain is pain.”

“Pain... is pain.”

Bucky nods. “Yeah. Pain is pain. So, next time, you wanna call me before doing this again?”

“That was the last time I cut.”

“What?”

“It was the last time. After I found her, I cut for the first time. It was also the last. This...?” Darcy held her arm out. “This isn’t anything. This was the product of an anxiety attack.”

Bucky shook his head. “Darcy. Maybe you didn’t use a blade, but it’s still self harm.”

Darcy drew her arm away from Bucky, and made herself smaller. “I didn’t mean to.”

Bucky slowly moved her hair away and lifted her chin for her to look at him. “Darcy...” He slowly moved his left arm towards hers, and loosely held onto her hurt arm, with his metal one. “You don’t gotta apologize. You just gotta get better, okay Doll?”

“Pain brings me out of it. Panic attacks.”

“I’m sure we could find something better...”

Darcy shook her head. “I don’t... I don’t know...” 

Bucky looked down at their still entangled arms. “I tried to tear mine off.” Darcy looked over at him startled. At some point, she had ended up basically sitting on his lap, and she blushed, and started to move away. Bucky, just pulled her back, before continuing, with a bitter laugh, “I guess I owe Tony one, for that.” 

“Bucky, no...”

“Nah, it’s okay. Did ya know, my nerves went through the metal on my shoulder, and I can feel so much with my arm.” He pulled his left arm away, and flexed his hand, metal fingers working intricately. “But, I never felt it when I was trying to tear it off. It hurt so goddamn much when Tony blew it off, but I never felt a thing.”

She shook her head, confused. “Bucky, what are you saying?”

“You can’t hurt a metal arm.”

“I don’t... I don’t understand.”

“Neither did I. It was excruciating, and I was glad to feel it. It was what I deserve.” 

Darcy shook her head, emphatically. “Bucky, you don’t deserve that. Not at all!” 

“You don’t either.” 

Darcy leaning in, even closer to Bucky, and drew her finger across his arm, and watched the plates shift as she did. “You can’t feel that?”

“I do, actually. If I closed my eyes, I could tell you exactly where you’re touching my arm. How many fingers you’re using to do so. What the temperature of your skin is. I can feel everything. But if you took a knife, and scraped it across the metal, I wouldn’t feel it like you would.”

Darcy quietly hummed. “So, you can feel, but you can’t hurt it?”

“If you try hard enough, you can hurt anything, no matter how strong. But, yeah, it’s pretty damn difficult to hurt a metal arm.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to the AMAZING Devidlg for beta reading this one. You’re to good to me.


End file.
